group invites

[DaveG]

No, when the PendingQuestion times out, it is destroyed.  If an answer magically arrives after this it would be registered as an error, because the question is already dealt with.  The invite system cannot handle more than one answer to a question.

[r.guppy]

- Penalties now increase with each decline:
1) 1 min lockout
2) 5 min + warning
3) 10 min + 10 advisor point fine + 10 duel point fine, if duel spam + death
4) 30 point fine(s) + death + kick from server
- Penalties expire with gameplay time, and can be lowered by getting an accept from a player with no penalties and a enough advisor points.
- Penalty level is saved to the player\'s account entry in the database, so repeat offenders can\'t escape it. (relog resets to 3rd level).............

  One last thing is this system auto, and if so how come i got challenged 11 times and had to get a GM to sort it out ?

[DaveG]

... when?!
Were they all from the same person?  (it\'s done via inviter, not invitee)  Were they all in a row?  (these things expire; they could come back later without penalty)  And, are you sure they didn\'t actually get the penalties, and come back anyway?

[zanzibar]

A number of people have reported a 28 minute warning right off the bat, so something isn\'t right.




An easy solution would to add a third option:  Decline and Warn, which would be distinct from just declining the invitation.  If someone declines, then that\'s all that happens.   If someone declines and warns, then the sender recieves penalty point(s?).

[r.guppy]

Same player and all in row, he ran off an a good ten mins before he was struck down, serching logs for when, but not to long ago.

[DaveG]

Originally posted by zanzibar
A number of people have reported a 28 minute warning right off the bat, so something isn\'t right.

And it\'s usually the people reporting it.  Find a reproducible way to get a half an hour wait starting from 0 SP, and get back to me...

Originally posted by zanzibar
An easy solution would to add a third option:  Decline and Warn, which would be distinct from just declining the invitation.  If someone declines, then that\'s all that happens.   If someone declines and warns, then the sender recieves penalty point(s?).

Stop with this.  No.  Regardless of the fact that the entire question system would have to be rewritten to handle a 3rd option (seriously, it\'s not as simple a thing as you think it is; it could obviously be done, but it\'s just not needed), I\'m not going to give spammers anyone to focus their idiocy on.  I also hate the fact that our community is plagued with people who we need to work against, and I\'d prefer not to advertise it in every prompt.  (not to mention that it would be abused more than it would be used correctly...)

The sane thing to do is to just not have these damn things be so distracting...  Why do we need a giant popup window in the first place?...  :/

[zanzibar]

\"I\'m not going to give spammers anyone to focus their idiocy on.\"


You have yet to show how this would happen anymore than it already does.




\"I also hate the fact that our community is plagued with people who we need to work against\"


Paranoid much?


There are plenty of people who think that my suggestion would be an improvement to the game.  I never said it would be easy.  In fact, I don\'t think anyone has said it would be easy.  But are the easy things the only things we\'re supposed to do?

[neko kyouran]

Heres my 2 trias.

Dave, why don\'t you just create a normal regular character and go in game, find someone willing to help, there are lots, and invite each other back and forth testing various timed intervals?  Why are you both just arguing back and forth when the simplest nswer is to just go in game and test the theory?

And Zanzi, Dave doesn\'t mod the forum so he couldn\'t have  deleted Janner\'s post.

Oh and just to be on the safe side, this post has been PM\'ed to a few people, in case someone is actually disgruntled and decides to give me a deletion.  

Also, I\'ll be going in game under XXXXXXXXXX and if I find someone willing to help test, I\'ll be testing the theories and report back with my own findings.  Just everyone calm down. geez.

Edit:  Changed the name of the character I was to use for testing purposes, since it would be easier with that one instead.


Edited to add Findings:

First, thanks to Ogu, for his help. Alright now we begin.

I created a group and had him accept invites from me for 5 staright times, and the invites/accepting were all done within a minute a time.  Results:  No punishment as expected.  This simulates a person asking many peopleto join a group quickly and what happens if everyone accepts.

Next test, this time I had him Declinethe first 2, then accept the next 3.

He declined the first, good.  Waiting no longer than 5 seconds to try again, I recieved a penalty of 10 minutes for invite spamming.  We waited the 10 minutes (actually we waited 17:23 sec) and he then accepted the next 3 without problem.  Results: the code may not be working as exactly as planned.

Next test:  This time we were to try decline, accept, decline, accept, decline accept.  He declined the first one.  Upon sending he second one, again, no longer than 5 seconds passing between the time i sent the second one andthe time he clickeddecline to the first one, I recieved as pounishment for invite spamming: minus 30 advisor points, death, and lockout from the server for a time which it didn\'t say.  we never got to finish this round of testing.

So as you can see, it is not remembering the accepts as it should, and is autoatically going to the next level of punishment.  The next test I was goingto try was to have ogu decline, wait for 5 minutes and then I wouldsend him another.  To see what would happen.  Testingwill resume once I can get back into the server.  Thanks all.

Oh, also, the character I used was fresh.  Never been challenged by anyone, never challenged anyone herself, never was invited to agroup before, never invitedanyone to a group made by here either.  She ws fresh out of the box so to say.

[Karyuu]

Thanks to both of you so much for the tests :3

I think this proves that the system needs looking into. It\'s not flawless - and the flaws aren\'t something you could glaze over \"just for now.\"

[neko kyouran]

My pleasure to be of help.  See what happens when we stay calm and think with our head an not our emotions?  

Well, now I\'m off to see about getting my poor fenki out of that mean old dark and scarely death realm and back to the nice warm sunny Hydlaa Plazaa.

[zanzibar]

If spammers are punished,  I don\'t care.  What I care about are those all too often instances of people being punished when they haven\'t done anything wrong.

Giveing people the choice between declining and invitation and declining and invitation with the attachment of a warning will solve the problem.

[Pestilence]

Good work on testing it indeed tbvp.

[DaveG]

Originally posted by Karyuu
Thanks to both of you so much for the tests :3

Agreed, but I had already tested this quite a bit before putting it on Laanx.  I\'m not an idiot, and I\'m not just saying it\'s working blindly.

Originally posted by tbvp
So as you can see, it is not remembering the accepts as it should, and is autoatically going to the next level of punishment.

Yeah, that\'s what it\'s supposed to do.  Your results show EXACTLY what is programmed to happen.  If it could just go down with every accept, any idiot would just create a shell account or get a friend to artificially lower their score.  (though, I did add some voodoo situations where it could go down if the accepter had enough AP or something)  As I already said... it only cares about denies.  They will expire after time, if you don\'t use the system for a while.

Originally posted by zanzibar
Paranoid much?

Yes.

[Karyuu]

Am I missing something? The -first- decline gave the third penalty - there was no one minute lockout, nor a five minute lockout with a warning. I was under the impression that it went in some sort of order, which evidently isn\'t the case.

[DaveG]

You\'d need to create a new character for each test case to do what he\'s expecting.  It is going up when it\'s supposed to.

Edited to add:
Personally, as I already said, the better solution to all this stupidity would be to have invites not be such an annoyance.  We wouldn\'t need to go through all this if it was just some text popping up, with an option to respond.  :/